video editing programs

Home Office Computing, Oct, 1999 by Dave Johnson

With the right tools, your brief business video can look like a Hollywood blockbuster

YEARS AGO, IF YOU wanted to create video presentations or training materials, you would have needed about $15,000 worth of tape decks, edit controllers, and other equipment to splice together a decent movie from raw VHS footage--if the idea of making your own videos even crossed your mind, that is.

That was then; this is now. Today, even the smallest home-based businesses are using video in a variety of ways. You can use it as a compelling component of your Web site to show off products, introduce staff, or demonstrate a technique that would take pages to explain in print. Additionally, you can take advantage of more traditional video applications, such as employee training and sales presentations.

You'd like to make movies without having a Hollywood budget or hiring your own gaffer? First, grab a beefy PC and a video capture card. Count on having at least a Pentium II with a 10GB or larger hard disk--the space will be eaten up quickly--and at least 64MB of RAM, though 128MB is best.

Second, pick up some video editing software. To help you do so, we tested six of the most popular packages on the market today, using each to create a moderately complex 20-second clip for online viewing. We used video captured from two cameras (a trusty JVC S-VHS camcorder and a Canon Optura, which generates higher-quality digital video), adding some simple transitions and a few titles to mix a movie that would play well from a Web site.

Although all the programs we tried are capable video editors, they're not cut from the same cloth. Besides varying dramatically in ease of use, some lacked key features such as titling and transitions. Some of these programs, too, leave plenty of room for growth, and the simplest may leave you feeling constricted when creating even relatively basic business presentations.

Adobe Premiere 5.1

The heavyweight champ of PC video editing programs, Premiere is perhaps the most robust, polished package around--and at $699, it's also one of the priciest. Adobe's venerable editor takes a traditional approach to creating videos--you drag clips from a library to a timeline. Different tracks on the timeline represent primary video, overlaying and fading from one clip to another, and audio for background music and narration. Keeping track of all of these elements can be tricky.

Although it comes with a videotape that introduces you to the new features in release 5.1 and teaches newbies some of the basics, Premiere is by no means easy to master. For instance, when it's time to create your movie, Premiere offers no advice about which codec or project settings are best for various kinds of movies, although it offers a long list of preset projects for videotape, CD-R, and Web output.

If you're serious about videography, however, this mature, well-honed program offers both a host of small conveniences--like the ability to create subfolders to organize clips in the library window--and ultrapowerful transition and special effects.

If you envision creating elaborate promotional videos (even long ones that would otherwise break Windows' 2GB size limit for AVI-format clips), or moving beyond videos for the Web, Premiere is an outstanding choice. There's also a slew of add-on products available, so it's a program that even Steven Spielberg would be unlikely to outgrow.

The bottom line: If you're producing high-quality video for various media and have time to learn its near-bottomless depths, Premiere is unparalleled. Otherwise, it's more video editor than most home offices will ever need.

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Dazzle Digital Video Creator

If video editing has an Achilles' heel, it's complexity: Between the hassles of installing capture cards, mastering arcane terminology, learning cryptic interfaces, and keeping track of the video elements you're editing, it's a wonder ordinary folks ever get any videos made. Dazzle solves most of those problems with an elegant capture and editing solution rolled into one--a simple hardware/software combination that's ready to roll for just $249.

With Dazzle, there's no need to open up your PC to install a capture card; the hardware plugs into your computer's USB port. The device has both composite and S-video inputs for any analog camcorder, but no FireWire input for newer digital video (DV) camcorders.

Once the hardware is set up, it's easy to use the supplied software to capture video clips to a media library, where you can combine clips and publish them as finished movies.

If you have the Web on your mind, Dazzle is a perfect solution-in fact, it's the best package in our roundup for creating Web videos. Once you've captured your clips and arranged them in the desired order using the storyboard interface, just click on a button to convert your creation into a movie in MPEG-1 format, then click on another to upload it directly to your site.

MPEG-1 is a fairly low-quality codec, but it's adequate for most Web shows. If you want your movie to stream--that is, play in real time so your viewers don't have to wait for the whole download to see the opening frames--Dazzle is the only product in this roundup with RealPlayer compression tools. You simply click on a button to convert and publish it to the Web.